BP finally admits Gulf spill is a lot larger than it had claimed
According to BP, it is now siphoning off as many as 5,000 barrels of oil a day from the leaking pipe on the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. That’s great news, since the company has been telling us that the leak itself was putting out 5,000 barrels a day. Problem solved, right BP?
Right?
Wrong.
The company has now been forced to acknowledge that outside scientists were right, that the leak is dumping a lot more than 5,000 barrels a day into the Gulf. How much more? The company won’t say, but thanks to pressure by Congress and the administration, you can see for yourself. The company has agreed to post a live video feed from the site, which can be seen here. It isnt’ pretty. (The site can be a little balky, probably because of heavy traffic.)
Meanwhile, fresh from arguing that the Civil Rights Act was an unconstitutional imposition on business, Rand Paul is now chastising President Obama for being too hard on BP. From the AP:
“What I don’t like from the president’s administration is this sort of, ‘I’ll put my boot heel on the throat of BP,’” Paul said in an interview with ABC’s “Good Morning America.” “I think that sounds really unAmerican in his criticism of business.”
Other Republicans have criticized the administration’s handling of the oil spill, but few have been so vocal in defending BP, the company responsible for the deep well and offshore rig that exploded last month, killing 11 workers.
… Paul, a libertarian and tea party favorite, said he had heard nothing from BP indicating it wouldn’t pay for the spill that threatens devastating environmental damage along the Gulf of Mexico coast.
“And I think it’s part of this sort of blame-game society in the sense that it’s always got to be somebody’s fault instead of the fact that maybe sometimes accidents happen,” Paul said.
On Sunday, BP officials are scheduled to take their next shot at shutting down the leak. They hope to suffocate it with heavy mud, followed by a permanent seal of cement, a process known as a “top kill.” I’ve looked around, and I can’t find anybody willing to take an educated guess on their odds of success. But it’s pretty clear that Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal and other officials are growing increasingly anxious about the oil now starting to come ashore.
The map below, from NOAA, demonstrates why. It shows the predicted spread of the spill through Sunday.
Again, it’s not pretty.
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173 comments Add your comment
@@
May 21st, 2010
2:52 pm
RW:
I’ve grown accustomed to it. AmVet can refer to Dusty and I as leg-humpers all day long and jay just lets it slide.
Slick, huh?
(ISH)
Normal
May 21st, 2010
2:53 pm
BP=Bayou Polluter
http://www.thenation.com/article/bp-oil-hits-louisiana-how-far-away-next-disaster
Paul
May 21st, 2010
2:53 pm
Those pictures, those executives – even the continuing bad news – are nauseous. At least Jay brought a little bit of good news.
Saw on Huffpo where some guys said using just hay can soak up oil. Likely a little easier to handle, this guy (sure he’s the owner of a business that makes the product, but so what?) was on the news showing how a plain old mattress pad soaks up oil. They dumped 3 quarts of motor oil into a wading pool, dropped the pad on it, pulled it off – and clear water. Said talking to the bureaucrats was an exercise in frustration. They’re focused on what – microorganisms that are green?
Guy needs to make a campaign contribution. Maybe then someone will listen. Other than a Republican Senatorial candidate from Nevada.
http://hpiaoat.blogspot.com/2010/05/mattress-pads-mop-up-oil-spill.html
AmVet
May 21st, 2010
2:54 pm
“And members of Congress released video from the company that showed much more oil pouring out of the damaged well than the siphon was capturing. Rep. Ed Markey, who leads a House subcommittee investigating the disaster, told reporters, “I think now we are beginning to understand that we cannot trust BP.”
“People do not trust the experts any longer,” said Markey, D-Massachusetts. “BP has lost all credibility. Now, the decisions will have to be made by others, because it is clear that they have been hiding the actual consequences of this spill.”
Not true, Representative Markey.
BP still has 5,000 barrels a day of credibility with the party first, anti-environment Republicans.
And I fully understand the poorly educated cons are incapable of understanding the interconnectedness of ecosystems, but good news for your side! Too bad for the Euro-weenie birds…
The damaging effects of the massive oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico will be felt all the way to Europe and the Arctic, a top scientist told a congressional panel Friday.
“This is not just a regional issue for the wildlife,” said Carl Safina, the president of the Blue Ocean Institute. Safina, who recently returned from the Gulf Coast region, presented several photographs, including one of an oil-covered bird.
“There will be a nest empty in Newfoundland,” Safina said, noting common migratory patterns. Safina warned that multiple forms of marine life in the Atlantic Ocean “come into the Gulf to breed.”
http://www.cnn.com/2010/US/05/21/gulf.oil.spill/index.html?hpt=T1
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
May 21st, 2010
2:57 pm
A giant oil spill, a liberal paradise so to speak, and here they are a month later waiting, hoping, praying, nah, maybe not praying, dreaming, aahhh yes, dreaming, of oil covered beaches and animals that for some damn reason just won’t happin….
How sad…………..they are.
I Report (-: You Whine )-: mmm, mmmm, mmmmm! Just sayin...
May 21st, 2010
2:58 pm
Could oil free beaches be their “disaster?”
Just askin….
joan
May 21st, 2010
3:00 pm
Taxpayer–it isn’t persons making over $250,00 per year–it is couples making that much. For single people it is $200,000. So watch your revenue stream.
addicted
May 21st, 2010
3:00 pm
“The community organizer has never even participated in business. Where does he get off talking bad about the companies that are the backbone of AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM!!!”
Are you deliberately being ironic (unlikely with the John Galt nickname). You do realize that the B in BP stands for British? You know, that country whose corporations Americans had the Boston Tea Party against, after which you tea partiers named yourself?
stands for decibels
May 21st, 2010
3:00 pm
RW:
I’ve grown accustomed to it.
Who knew that RW and @@ were anarcho-syndicated commune members?
now we see the violence inherent in the system!
@@
May 21st, 2010
3:01 pm
Behold, for instance, major environmental groups’ attitude toward the Gulf oil spill.
We know that before the disaster, President Obama recklessly pushed to expand offshore drilling. We also know that his Interior Department gave British Petroleum’s rig a “categorical exclusion” from environmental scrutiny and, according to the New York Times, “gave permission to BP and dozens of other oil companies to drill in the Gulf without first getting required (environmental) permits.” Worse, we know that after the spill, the same Interior Department kept issuing “categorical exclusions” for new Gulf oil operations, and Interior Secretary Ken Salazar still refuses “to rule out continued use of categorical exclusions,” as the Denver Post reported (heckuva job, Kenny!).–San Francisco Chronicle
TaxPayer
May 21st, 2010
3:04 pm
it isn’t persons making over $250,00 per year–it is couples making that much. For single people it is $200,000. So watch your revenue stream.
Anything over $199,999 goes to next year if you’re single. Check. Unless you make millions. Then it all just goes straight into the off-shore accounts. Double Check.
TaxPayer
May 21st, 2010
3:05 pm
BP. Amoco. What’s in a name.
mm
May 21st, 2010
3:06 pm
“Yeah, but they still can’t find it, just sayin….”
Actually, BP hired David Copperfield and he made the oil disappear.
“And he said he wasnt gonna raise our taxes.”
Exactly which taxes got raised?
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:08 pm
blah
AmVet
May 21st, 2010
3:08 pm
Thanks for the heads up, pilgrim. I woulda missed this gem among many others:
“Well, he’s a man who believes Adam & Eve had three sons and populated the Earth, he must be right.”
TaxPayer
May 21st, 2010
3:09 pm
We know that before the disaster, President Obama recklessly pushed to expand offshore drilling.
I need more than a mint. Neck-high wading boots are in order for that load.
Jefferson
May 21st, 2010
3:09 pm
If a rock falls from a truck, bounces off the highway and cracks your windshield, this is considered a road hazard and the truck is not responsible. I hope BP doesn’t use that line of thinking.
moonbat betty
May 21st, 2010
3:10 pm
has anyone played pac-man on the google homepage?
Normal
May 21st, 2010
3:10 pm
Whiner,
Why aren’t you proving yourself to be better than the Libs by going down there and helping out?
@@
May 21st, 2010
3:10 pm
sfd:
jay’s the boss hereabouts. No dressing down allowed for this blogger….appropriate dress IS required.
Whatevah…..freedoms for thees but not for me.
Oh look!!!!! There’s an empty seat at the coffee shop. If you’re lucky they might let you sit with ‘em.
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:10 pm
Got banned from Cyntia Tucker for using a Jesse Jackson quote. How does that happen?
TaxPayer
May 21st, 2010
3:12 pm
Why aren’t you proving yourself to be better than the Libs by going down there and helping out?
He’s already bought two Escalades. What more do you want from him. Well, maybe if he were to buy a fleet of Hummers.
Paul
May 21st, 2010
3:14 pm
BMDPD
Depends.
Was it something about “Hymietown”?
stands for decibels
May 21st, 2010
3:15 pm
jay’s the boss hereabouts.
Ah. I thought he was King Arthur. My bad.
Normal
May 21st, 2010
3:15 pm
Taxpayer,
Normal
May 21st, 2010
3:17 pm
Jay’s the Jeffe…
moonbat betty
May 21st, 2010
3:19 pm
BMDPD- they must think you have white skin.
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:19 pm
No it had something to do with his comment on Fox News.
AmVet
May 21st, 2010
3:21 pm
The SF Chronicle and Denver post are major environmental groups?
Jeezoo, these bizarre Cult of Victimhood members keep getting curiouser and curiouser…
What the hell ever happened to party of personal responsibility?
(Man, that one still makes me laugh.)
Oh wait, I found it! It’s in Newt the Nut’s Contract on America;
The Personal Responsibility Act
An act to discourage irrational whining and persecution complexes on AJC blogs by reforming and eliminating cherry picked, unsourced cut and pastes form goofball far right wing websites. This would be achieved by prohibiting blogging welfare to bloggers with an IQ under 90 and enacting a two-years-and-out provision with bloggers who consistently act like petulant brats.
Peter Calabria
May 21st, 2010
3:22 pm
First time posting down here in rebel country. Our family of seven lived up there in Murray County redneck Heaven the year after the Atlanta Olympics and met ya-all face to face including the wife and I spending three days in the county jail for telling the Sheriff we were going get our kitty cats to urinate on all the Baptist Church grave stones, charges (of terrorist threats) later dropped. Getting back to ya-all and hearing how people who dislike those struggling to earn a buck having their lives ruined by oil company shortsightedness and greed is somehow a leftist thing … as funny as a lunatic asylum filled with angry castrates. You people really are funny! All bunch of George Rekers rent-a-boy whackos!!
moonbat betty
May 21st, 2010
3:22 pm
Well, you’ll be ok here. Folks here say “Dickhead” here all the time.
Outhouse GoKart
May 21st, 2010
3:23 pm
Paul
May 21st, 2010
3:14 pm
LOL!!
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:27 pm
He had said something like … Obama didn’t want certain folks to behave like certain folks. I don’t know, but the discussion was getting pretty heated. I shouldn’t have said what I said, but I was merely illustrating the double standard.
Hillbilly Deluxe
May 21st, 2010
3:28 pm
the wife and I spending three days in the county jail for telling the Sheriff we were going get our kitty cats to urinate on all the Baptist Church grave stones,
How classy of you.
AmVet
May 21st, 2010
3:29 pm
Hymietown? Hebes Unite!
BMDPD, sounds as if you’re just one of those smart ass white boys!
Peter, welcome to the AJC’s insane asylum. (Every once in awhile, when the moderator ain’t lookin’, we get to run it too!)
Mr. Snarky
May 21st, 2010
3:31 pm
“A giant oil spill, a liberal paradise so to speak, and here they are a month later waiting, hoping, praying, nah, maybe not praying, dreaming, aahhh yes, dreaming, of oil covered beaches and animals that for some damn reason just won’t happin….
How sad…………..they are.”
Whiner’s the sad one. Living in a world of darkness where his perceived enemies live hateful little lives just like his. Misery loves company.
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:33 pm
AmVet, and???????? So what if I am a S.A.W.B.?
BMDPD
May 21st, 2010
3:34 pm
BMDPD is changing his handle to SAWB!
SAWB
May 21st, 2010
3:34 pm
My first post!
Obama supporter
May 21st, 2010
3:36 pm
The answer is simple.
We need more taxes on the rich(those making more than 50,000), we need more government workers, and we need an oil spill Czar.
More taxes on gas too.
And Rand Paul is a racist.
And that Calabria guy obviously got beat up for mouthing off. Probably telling someone how he used to do it in New York.
Normal
May 21st, 2010
3:36 pm
SAWB
May 21st, 2010
3:34 pm
Now you can sneak back to Cynthia’s blog…
SAWB
May 21st, 2010
3:38 pm
Normal, I think they got me by IP.
Paul
May 21st, 2010
3:39 pm
sfd
“Ah. I thought he was King Arthur. ”
Nah, King Arthur’s the guy who makes the flour –
(gotta get in at least one cooking-related comment)
Hey Peter, didn’t your momma ever tell you you’re judged by the company you keep?
This is nonrecoverable -
josef nix
May 21st, 2010
3:40 pm
Peter Calabria
@ 5:22
Well, I hope you’ve taken your Pied Noire self someplace more conducive to your Weltanschauung–like, say, Sudan?
Hillbilly–
As per your question last p.m. It was as I thought and there is no slang attachment according to those from across the Spanish speaking world. Most thought of it as “especially endearing.”
josef nix
May 21st, 2010
3:42 pm
AmVet
You rang?
Rightwing Troll
May 21st, 2010
3:42 pm
Will you all just look up seepage already???
Gale
May 21st, 2010
3:43 pm
Y’all gwan upstairs and chill.
stands for decibels
May 21st, 2010
3:45 pm
And Rand Paul is a racist.
Has anyone of note actually called him that?
Hillbilly Deluxe
May 21st, 2010
3:45 pm
Josef
Thanks. The person in question has a name ending in “ia” just as the examples you gave me last night. I was just curious and since she wouldn’t tell me what it meant, just to aggravate me I think (in a fun way), I have taken to just calling her, “Tater”.
md
May 21st, 2010
3:48 pm
Hey PC, if you want to mock folks, at least have the decency to learn how to spell it. You can use “you all” of “y’all”, but ya-all is completely foreign to this neck of the woods.
@@
May 21st, 2010
3:50 pm
They’re gonna focus on Illinois…Chicago’s suburbs to be exact, while failing to process illegals sent to them from the border states?
In the midst of an outcry over illegal immigration and Arizona’s new crackdown, a top Department of Homeland Security official visiting Chicago on Wednesday said his agency intended to step up enforcement in places such as Illinois.
Echoing comments by President Barack Obama and others in the administration, Morton said that Arizona’s new law targeting illegal immigration is not “good government.” The law makes it a crime to be in the state illegally and requires police to check suspects for immigration paperwork.
Morton said his agency will not necessarily process illegal immigrants referred to them by Arizona officials.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-met-immigration-laws-chicago-20100519,0,6582417.story
Sounds like political suicide to me, but what the hey!!! Go for it.
Weird!
md
May 21st, 2010
3:50 pm
“Will you all just look up seepage already???”
Us older folks know what seepage is – and it’s got nothing to do with oil
Anti-lib
May 21st, 2010
3:59 pm
Hey moron, who cares how many barrels are leaking a day!!!! The main focus is to stop the leak!!!
williebkind
May 21st, 2010
4:02 pm
We should have drilled in Anwar!
TaxPayer
May 21st, 2010
4:03 pm
Us older folks know what seepage is – and it’s got nothing to do with oil
Fortunately, I’m not that old. Anyway, here’s the seepage stuff again.
Balance Our Budget
May 21st, 2010
4:04 pm
Im guessing the BP bashing libs on here drive a vehicle.So if if we shut these big bad oil companies down what are you planning on powering your suv with.Of course they don’t think that far.If you drive you are part of the reason we have big oil companies.So hush your fussing and go invent a car that runs on water.
md
May 21st, 2010
4:07 pm
“We should have drilled in Anwar!”
Could of at least had a convoy of tankers there sucking it all up. No, let’s screw up the oceans instead.
Jeff Fryer
May 21st, 2010
4:18 pm
It is as unfair to depict BP in effigy as a heartless, tin pirate with an oil can on it’s shoulder parroting, “Drill, baby, Drill” as it is to depict Obama as a voodoo witchdoctor.
Rand is as good as the Tea Party can do right now. He’ll get better at Q+A as he campaigns and he’ll soon be fooling all the people all the time the same way Sarah Palin, Paris Hilton, and every guest who’s ever appeared on Jerry Springer does.
Scout
May 21st, 2010
4:19 pm
Doggone/GA:
“What hypocrisy?”
“They are at liberty to run on any platform they think will get them elected.”
Sure they are but to do so knowing they will then vote another way is lying to their constituents and the “hypocrisy is stunning.”
Jon but not Jon Voight
May 21st, 2010
4:19 pm
If U.S. domestic oil drilling is supposed to have such a positive downward effect on gas prices – why haven’t prices skyrocketed as result of all the oil going to waste? Just askin…
Scout
May 21st, 2010
4:20 pm
P.S. to Doggone/GA:
But then I don’t expect you to see or understand that because that’s just the way liberals are.
Scout
May 21st, 2010
4:22 pm
BMDPD:
Because she is a lib. and can’t take a dose of her own medicine ………………
MarquisMarc
May 21st, 2010
4:56 pm
As usual…BITCH, BITCH, BITCH! Man, you people! The bottom line is that there’s a terrible problem that needs a resolution ASAP. So if you don’t have anything positive to stay, SHUT UP! I feel sorry for the wildlife and the environment. This is our world, which we were given dominion over and it’s inhabitants. And are we doing a good job? I don’t think so.
take a leak
May 21st, 2010
4:58 pm
I can stop the leak. Take a pipe 1/2 inch less in diameter than the broken pipe. Insert it 20-30 feet into the pipe. The pressure will not stop it because the smaller pipe is still open. After insertion start pumping at the end of the smaller pipe. There will be some leakage between the 2 pipes, but it will be small compared to what it is now.
atlin83
May 21st, 2010
4:59 pm
Thank god all you “pro-business-at-all-costs” conservatives know how to run a multi-billion dollar oil conglomerate. I’m sure it’s just as easy as you think, and make it sound.
take a leak
May 21st, 2010
5:08 pm
Another idea. Fire will burn under water provided there is oxygen and fuel. There is natural gas coming out with the oil. Pump oxygen down to the leaking pipe and burn everything at the source. Can anyone pass these ideas on to the authorities?
KAO
May 21st, 2010
5:11 pm
Maybe a few extra large pampers with that super absorbent lining could mop up most of it? Just sayin’.
KAO
May 21st, 2010
5:14 pm
Actually, the folks who run BP are really lucky they don’t live in China. Remember the tainted milk scandal a couple of years ago? The Chinese government ensured the owner of the milk company and his wife along with the manager of the tainted milk plant all helped “clean it up” with some well placed rounds to the back of their heads from an Chinese version of an M-16. Voila! Been no more milk scandals!
DannyX
May 21st, 2010
6:10 pm
Now that corporations are people BP is pretty much the person I admire the most in the world.
1. Jesus
2. BP
3. Halliburton
4. SEC football, because they’re now people too.
5. Junior
Ok so I like BP 2nd most. You really have to admire what BP is doing. He is really doing good through this whole made up crisis. It restores my faith in people. Are we ready as a nation for a BP president? (Lets not get into that birth certificate thing.) No, because BP is from Canada. Otherwise yes.
not on my watch
May 21st, 2010
7:34 pm
Ran Paul: Ross Perot knew what he was talking about when he said, “The activist is not the man who says the river is dirty. The activist is the man who cleans up the river.”
Jack Conway: I watched Ross Perot on TV, and you, sir, are no Ross Perot!
not on my watch
May 21st, 2010
7:37 pm
Mail your sponges to:
28100 Torch Parkway
Warrenville, IL
60555-3938
United States
Kris G
May 21st, 2010
10:39 pm
Balance Our Budget… So either I should give up my car, or I should fight for the rights of a FOREIGN OIL COMPANY to FLOOD THE GULF I LIVE ON with enormous amounts of oil when they ASSURED ME AND MY COUNTRY IT COULD NEVER HAPPEN again? That’s a tea partier for you. If it doesn’t affect him directly, it’s just not his problem. You people are way more knee-jerk than any liberal group anywhere.
heartlandboy
May 22nd, 2010
1:59 pm
so when is Rand Paul gonna man-up and deliver his “mmm, I love me some rich pointy-headed british bureaucrats” speech to the gulf shrimpers face-to-face?
or will he pull another of his “I was against gov’t regulation before I was for it” flip-flops?
meet Rand Paul, clueless f*ckwit.